We won’t be getting a rematch of the national championship in women’s college basketball this upcoming year.
These two women’s college basketball powerhouses won’t face off for the first time in more than a decade
UConn and South Carolina won’t play in the regular season in women’s basketball, ending a long continuous rivalry.
Photo by Thien-An Truong/ISI Photos/Getty Images
Mitchell Northam is a Senior Writer for SB Nation, covering women’s college sports at Breakaway.
At least not in the regular season, anyway.
According to a report from CT Insider, the UConn Huskies and the South Carolina Gamecocks will not play each other in the 2025-26 season, which brings an end to UConn’s longest continuous non-conference rivalry.
Geno Auriemma’s Huskies and Dawn Staley’s Gamecocks have faced off every regular season — and a handful of times in the postseason — since the 2014-15 campaign. UConn is 9-5 against South Carolina in that stretch. The Gamecocks had won four straight in the series before the Huskies beat them in Columbia in February and then in the national championship game in Tampa, Fla.
In 13 of those 14 meetings, at least one of UConn or South Carolina was ranked No. 1 in the AP Poll. The matchups often drew sellout crowds and big national TV audiences.
UConn and South Carolina played twice before the series started in earnest, with the Huskies winning back-to-back games in 2007 and 2008.
While they won’t play against each other, the Huskies and Gamecocks are assembling schedules littered with high-profile matchups. UConn will open the season in Germany at Ramstein Air Base against Louisville, and they’ll also take on Tennessee, Iowa and Utah. South Carolina will face Duke, Texas and UCLA at the inaugural Players Era Women’s Championship in Las Vegas. Both the Gamecocks and the Huskies will travel to Los Angeles to play against USC, and USF will host both programs in Tampa as well.
In the ACC-SEC Challenge, South Carolina will travel to Louisville to face Jeff Walz’s Cardinals.
Staley and Auriemma both return incredibly talented rosters with aspirations of winning the national championship. South Carolina added the nation’s leading scorer Ta’Niya Latson and All-SEC double-double machine Madina Okot through the transfer portal to pair with sharpshooter Tessa Johnson, do-it-all forward Joyce Edwards, and veterans in Raven Johnson and Chloe Kitts. Meanwhile, the Huskies brought back stars in Azzi Fudd and Sarah Strong, and bolstered their depth via the transfer portal by adding USC’s Kayleigh Heckel and Wisconsin’s Serah Williams.
While UConn and South Carolina won’t meet in the regular season, there’s a decent chance that fans will see both teams at the Final Four in Phoenix.
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